Oshibana
by electric gurrl
Summary: Whether they are called thorns or thistles, they still sting just the same. — O/S.


A/N: **Warnings: **Incest, Abuse.

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**Oshibana**

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_And his dark secret love  
Does thy life destroy.  
\- The Sick Rose, William Blake -_

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_Of dried petals..._

Azula drops a book and dried cherry tree petals burst out like confetti.

They are a brilliant hue of pure white that Azula had nearly forgotten she managed to find, so pristine, with not a touch of red. She is eleven, and she collects plants because there is not much else she is allowed to do other than preparing for war and she would probably go insane without some form of hobby.

It is an odd thing, she knows, for a firebender to collect what amounts to kindling. But perhaps that is the attraction of it, the thrill of the mortality of all things and the ability to destroy or preserve what she chooses.

And she preserves them, she always preserves them.

Humorous, perhaps, in a dry manner. To take lives and spare lives interchangeably in a chaotic world where free will might as well not exist. Not that plants are... _alive _necessarily. But she does like to make the decision of whether they will burn, bleed or blossom.

Azula was taught to make art out of them, but she does not have the patience for it, nor time to dedicate to wasteful pursuits. If she _wants _to conquer the world by the time she's seventeen, she has to focus her energy on better things than sticking plants on expensive paper.

But she preserves them all the same.

She picks up all of the petals carefully and rummages around her room for somewhere better to store them. The book is left open to a page about common illnesses in survival situations, and how to treat them.

At last, she drops them into an unused jewelry box and continues scaling her shelf in search of the Seventh War Manifesto for her test tomorrow.

[X]

_Of white roses..._

The white roses are fresh and alien to Azula. She is thirteen and her father gave her flowers, which she supposes isn't the _most _clueless and dispassionate gift he has given. They are alive right now, briefly, damp and cool and smelling of places Azula has never been.

She intends to clip them and dry them. It would be a perfect reminder of her father, she supposes. And of her power over life and death.

"Ouch," she snaps and he looks up abruptly. "They have thorns."

"Thistles, little princess. On roses they're called thistles," he says casually and Azula sucks on her palm, the metallic blood gushing between her teeth as she tries to ease the pain of the small wound.

"I ruined it," Azula suddenly murmurs as she looks at the dots of permanent red on the white flowers. And they will turn to brown eventually, poisoned by her blood. She feels ill when things like this happen. When she sullies anything flawless, when she misses a step... it is devastating for days.

_Almost isn't good enough_.

"Just prune the one you got blood on. It's nothing to panic over," he says and she thinks she can sense threats in his words, but she is not sure of it.

She just carefully sets the stained white rose aside, and rearranges the others so it looks like the other flower never existed.

[X]

_Of fruit ripening..._

Azula soaks in the sunlight with her eyes closed, so unaware that eyes are on her. That eyes are always on her, despite how foolish it is to look at her for too long. Not with her jealous father who can crush kingdoms for sheer pleasure.

He looks at her as well, and he wonders how he could have made something so beautiful.

But it is not her adolescence, nor her ripening, nor her beauty that he thinks about. Her looks are so easy to pass over, so long as no one else is leering. But her power is dangerous, her ambition, drive and lack of care for anything but herself are all impressive values.

Ozai sees himself in her as she ages, and that rightfully terrifies him. There is a significant lack of control as she comes into her own, and although she speaks to him with the utmost respect and is loyal to her nation, he thinks she may be far more loyal to her own ends than anything else.

_You taught her to be this way, you fool. She learned from watching you and now you try to reverse the permanent._

It is in that line of thought that he forces her to practice on broken glass. She looks at him as if he is insane at first, but he only gives her one look before she steps onto it with her eyes squeezed shut.

This should be... sadistic. But watching the blood flow from her feet like juice from a nearly bursting cherry is masochism, sheer masochism. It is painful to see her hurt, and maybe that is why he so badly wants to hurt her.

"You are," Ozai says one night, although he so rarely addresses her, much less this privately, "the last thing I have left in this world. You realize that?"

Azula's tongue hides behind her teeth. She does not know how to respond to the moment of vulnerability. Or the way he looks at her.

"It's just us," she says, stating the obvious in hopes that it will make the conversation fade.

"Yes," and he tries to forget.

[X]

_Of scorched gardens..._

The rending of her virginity burns hotter than fire and it... it is something she is unsure how to fathom or explain, save for pretending it did not happen. Silence is her only power, but it is also something that utterly consumes her.

His hands press down on her arms and she does not know how to react, what to do. This is the kind of thing that no one ever imagines would happen to them, not for an instant. And she is so shocked, that she is utterly silent save for the involuntary sounds of pain as he thrusts in and out of her. It seems to last for an eternity, until he becomes more forceful, more breathless, and a dam bursts within him.

She is still silent, still shocked, as he rises and she wonders why he seems to feel no shame for his actions and she is utterly riddled with it. Something has to be said, she supposes, but she has no idea what.

"I'm sorry," he says and she does not know what to make of it. "It was a need I could no longer deny."

And Azula still says nothing.

Blood on her alabaster skin can only remind her of those ruined things, those ruined flowers, those mistakes and perfect beings she destroyed. Destruction, destruction.

In the morning, she pulls herself out of her bed and finds she is limping, limping to the bathroom where she peels off the remnants of clothes stuck to her by her icy sweat, and she draws and heats her own bath so that no one can see.

So that no one can know her imperfection.

The bathing afterwards burns like lava, but it still does not make her feel clean.

After she drags herself from the bath, the water cold against her pruned skin, she dresses in the cleanest clothes she can, ones that cover the bruises both grabbed and sucked onto her skin, which once was a flawless expanse.

She burns them all. Every preserved flower, every spared life she collected.

They are the last of her childhood, and she is no longer a child who can revel in her own power.

Princess Azula has never felt so powerless.

[X]

_Of seeds taking root..._

It becomes so normal, mundane and routine. Like training exercises or the sun rising in the east. Those nights, _not all nights_, would last forever, eternally and she would let her mind wander the best she could while still enduring, while still clinging on to some semblance of sanity.

She does not think much of it when she is released, or the fluids exchanged. It did not matter her, as long as everything could be cleaned and then dried with quiet blue flames as if it were never there.

And Azula goes to school doing the day and realizes she is the utter embodiment of one of the pressed flowers. Utterly perfect and captivating on the outside, better than the other, _ordinary_ petals, and careful thought put into her. But the act of her creation and the continuation of her existence is has sucked her completely dry.

It is at this point that she starts to think that perhaps this is just the way it is meant to be. And she comes up with the best reasons she possibly can for her situation, and tells herself to _cope _with it silently and responsibly like an adult and not a little girl.

(even if she isn't even fourteen yet)

In the middle of class one day she nearly knocks over her desk with the sudden, urgent need to vomit. It isn't sparked by just nothing, but by exactly what she is reading, and exactly how she has figured out words that she never minded before.

She makes it halfway to the bathroom before hurling all over the floor, and she winds up being escorted home and curling up in her bed, filled with tension.

Azula had, in that class, discovered the exact meaning of seed, that had nothing to do with gardens and watercolor paintings.

[X]

_And of thorns and thistles..._

"Thistles, my dear," Ozai corrects as she examines the white roses.

"Of course. I misspoke," Azula purrs in response. "Thorns or thistles... it's still such a shame that flowers don't last forever."

They prefer the more permanent, she and her father. Statues, conquests, cities named for you. Flowers fade and die. Like Zuko. Like mother.

But her father interrupts and she cautiously holds her tongue. "Don't you dry plants? I should get you something else if you no longer care for the hobby," Ozai says and Azula studies them for a moment.

"I've outgrown it, father," Azula says softly. So fitting he gives her clipped flowers on the week before she leaves to go prune their family tree and remove the two undesirables.

And then she will truly be all he has left.

_Not _that it matters.

Zuko home or away, she will always be the favorite.

Mother dead or vanished, Azula will always be such a hollow replacement.

The war won or perpetuated, Azula will not escape the destructive force that is her father's brand of love.

Fire Lord or exile, their blood is shared and is a permanent bond.

Whether they are called thorns or thistles, they sting just the same.


End file.
